Engineering Graphene Flakes for Wearable Textile Sensors via Highly Scalable and Ultrafast Yarn Dyeing Technique

Afroj, Shaila; Karim, Nazmul; Wang, Zihao; Tan, Sirui; He, Pei; Holwill, Matthew; Ghazaryan, Davit; Fernando, Anura; Novoselov, Kostya S.

Abstract

© 2019 American Chemical Society. Multifunctional wearable e-textiles have been a focus of much attention due to their great potential for healthcare, sportswear, fitness, space, and military applications. Among them, electroconductive textile yarn shows great promise for use as next-generation flexible sensors without compromising the properties and comfort of usual textiles. However, the current manufacturing process of metal-based electroconductive textile yarn is expensive, unscalable, and environmentally unfriendly. Here we report a highly scalable and ultrafast production of graphene-based flexible, washable, and bendable wearable textile sensors. We engineer graphene flakes and their dispersions in order to select the best formulation for wearable textile application. We then use a high-speed yarn dyeing technique to dye (coat) textile yarn with graphene-based inks. Such graphene-based yarns are then integrated into a knitted structure as a flexible sensor and could send data wirelessly to a device via a self-powered RFID or a low-powered Bluetooth. The graphene textile sensor thus produced shows excellent temperature sensitivity, very good washability, and extremely high flexibility. Such a process could potentially be scaled up in a high-speed industrial setup to produce tonnes (∼1000 kg/h) of electroconductive textile yarns for next-generation wearable electronics applications.

Citation

Afroj, S., Karim, N., Wang, Z., Tan, S., He, P., Holwill, M., …Novoselov, K. S. (2019). Engineering Graphene Flakes for Wearable Textile Sensors via Highly Scalable and Ultrafast Yarn Dyeing Technique. ACS Nano, 13(4), 3847-3857. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.9b00319

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 20, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Feb 28, 2019
• Publication Date: Apr 23, 2019
• Deposit Date: Dec 8, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 9, 2019
• Journal: ACS Nano
• Print ISSN: 1936-0851
• Electronic ISSN: 1936-086X
• Publisher: American Chemical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 3847-3857
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.9b00319
• Keywords: General Engineering; General Physics and Astronomy; General Materials Science
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/4789669